Complain about a product or service

Hughes Network Systems

Christine of Leadville, CO November 12, 2009

I have been with hughesnet for 4 years..and the service has been less then poor. I was convinced to upgrade to the new HN900 to improve service and speed. In the small print deep in the terms and conditions we were entered into 24 month contract. We try to work from our home office and the speed of downloads and the time it talked to do anything is equal to dial up. any call to tech support takes 30 min. to 2 hours (on our cell phones because we do not have land lines) and it leaves us feeling taken advantage of.

the issue is never really resolved and it is somehow not their fault. The technician they sent over to install the new Satellite could not get a good signal and recommended installing the dish and the receiver in our detached garage with a wireless router. (this is especially convenient when it is 10 below and snowing out and we have to restart the receiver because it quit working)With this setup our connection was always low to poor. we spent an additional 100 on a range booster which has made the signal better but still it takes at least 20 minutes to send an email. Last week our service went out and it took 7 days get it fixed. which costs our business time and money!!

Their email provider is a joke. The spell check doesn't recognize small common words and at any time without warning the session can time out and your work is lost. If you attempt to open any attachments in an email it is a grueling 20 minute process which is never fully successful and so aggravating you want to quit to save your sanity. when we call tech support and talk to "john" or "Max" in India they never take fault for the issues and if you try to terminate they want to charge a 400 termination fee. it is hard not to get mad at them despite the fact it is not their fault they just work for a horrible company. We feel really stuck. we cannot run our business appropriately we cannot afford the termination fee and don't know what to do to. anyone know about a class action suit against these scammers? How can it be legal to advertise service and not provide. Really at our wits end...

Richard of Phenix, VA November 12, 2009

I had a system installed (bolted to house) oct 16 2009, It hasn't worked correctly yet---I keep complaining no one, they say i Hvae to pay 29.95 to see why it doesn't work. 2 weeks old,

Steven of Silver City, NM November 12, 2009

False advertising, very poor service and connection speeds are often less than 10% of advertised speeds. Customer support is so bad you don't want to get involved. These guys are shameless. For years they have been lowering the quality of our service account until it's now 25% of what it was in 2006. Each time they cut it in half, the ramp up their advertising claims.

In our case, under an 80 monthly "pro-plus" account, we go for months with speeds that are just better than dialup. Then it improves for a while, then gets worse. They seem to be testing the limits of how many customers they can sell the same pipes to. It's not highspeed as advertised. They are impossible to deal with.

John of Placerville, CA November 4, 2009

I join the others on your web site in complaining about Hughes satellite service. Unfortunately, most homeowners who use Hughes live in rural areas; we're a captive audience and we fall prey to Hughes' propaganda that they provide much faster service than dial-up. This is a partial truth/partial lie. In N. California, until 8 P.M., you might as well have dial-up--it's probably faster than Hughes's satellite. After 8 or 9 P.M., service speeds up.

Hughes also seems to service its satellites on week-ends, so service on Sat/Sun is often non-existent. Trying to talk to a responsive person in Customer Service is useless: these reps are so far down the corporate ladder (most of them are contractors and not employees, anyway)and they have no authority beyond listening to you. One rep told me that I could improve the speed by subscribing to a more expensive service. I asked her if Hughes could put this in writing and her bottom line was: speed depends on weather, blah, blah.

In fact, if you read your Hughes contract--the very, very fine print on the back--you'll see that Hughes guarantees nothing, nada, zip, zilch, beyond giving you a dish and a receiver. Until Hughes gets some meaningful competiton, we'll just have to grin and bear it. However, I assume that a lot of people will bolt Hughes at the first chance that presents itself.

I pay for reasonable satellite service. I'm not looking for the Cadillace of services, but for a modest, reliable Chevrolet. Instead, daily, between the hours of 9 a.m. and 8 p.m., I usually get: "Error 501--Satellite Outage". In other words, Hughes is stealing from me.

Roger of Sacramento, CA November 2, 2009

i cancelled my business with them on aug. 3,2009. they told me i cannot cancell until i pay the lease period. then, they withdraw 318 from my bank account without telling me.i told them i only authorize for their monthly services. i did not know. beforehand that there was a lease period which was not explain to me.

then last 10/13/2009, they withdraw another 326 from my account which they claimed was for the equipments they installed for the operation of the internet connection. i called them about the matter and someone told me, they will return the money when i sent them the equipments which i shipped two days

after i talked to someone in their billing dept.unfortunately, she said they cannot refund the money because i did not return the equipment on time which is 45 days after cancelling. this provision was not explain to me, only this time.

Jennifer of Audubon, IA October 29, 2009

Upon viewing an advertisement placed by Hughesnet, claiming superior services in comparison to dial up internet provided by local telephone companies. I agreed to use Hughesnet as my internet service provider. After utilizing Hughes services, it is very apparent the internet speeds are not superior to dial up, restrictions are placed on the amount of downloads available, the customer service is poor and creates unavoidable aggrivation, due to the inability to properly understand the technical support personnel and the fees by far exceed that of dial up providers for similar services.

It is extremely obvious based on the amount of complaints placed on various websites, the FCC and BBB, that there is cause for concern for the general public. Also, one could consider the advertisements regarding superior service as false advertising. If the choices for internet providers are limited due to location of customers, the charges for services should not be excessive and should be based on the ability to provide satisfactory internet services Hughesnet claims to provide. It is very unfortunate for the many customers who are in rural locations and need or desire the use of internet services to have so few choices available!!

steve of collinsville, OK October 29, 2009

I woke up this morning ready to begin my job as a stay-at-home tech support person for a large company. As luck woudl have it, I was unable to get on the internet for the 2nd time in less than a week. Consequently I was unable to work. This was the 3rd time this has happened since I was forced to purchase HughesNet satellite internet service since moving to a rural location that does not provide any other internet options.

I dreadfully called HughesNet Technical Support knowing full-well beforehand that I was gonna hear the "it's not our fault call your computer's tech support people" spiel (as I had heard the previous two times this had happened). As luck would have it on the previous two incidents I was able to eventually solve the problem myself but not today. Nope, I had to call HughesNet and speak with 'Max', who did indeed give me the "it's not our fault" speech. I called Dell Technical support and spent 130 and 1 1/2 hours re-installing Windows XP to no avail. I still couldn't get on the internet.

I called HughesNet again and talked to a guy named 'Andrew' who, after some diagnostics and conversation, determined that my problem was due to the fact that I had downloaded a service pack for some software that 'exceeded my allotted download quota' and therefore HughesNet had cut me off until midnight of the following day. Only then did I learn that I had a 'download quota' and I would, in fact, be 'punished' if I exceeded it. (I suppose if I look hard enough at the crap I signed when I signed up somewhere in a .5 font it talks about it). I then realized that this is precisely what had happened to me the previous two times I had been unable to connect to the internet.

And only after 5 calls to HughesNet ("it's not our fault") and wasting 130 with Dell Support was I able to get a HughesNet tech support person competant enough to know about and explain the 'download quota'. Man, I hate these jerks. If there was ANY other internet alternative other than dial-up modem these morons would be history.

My advise to you all is to NEVER subscribe to HughesNet internet services unless, like me, you need the internet for your livlihood and you have absolutely no other alternative. And be prepared for total incompetance if you ever need technical support.

Melissa of Bradley, CA October 22, 2009

In May we needed technical support for our 4 year old hughesnet, it then required a service call. No longer under the hughesnet warranty we called a local company that had been once befor to our home for a warranty repair, they came out and informed us that we required a new satelite for our free promotional modem. We proceeded to upgrade equiptment nad changed our billing information from my mom's credit card to my business account and upgraded our monthly package in May 2009.

Instead of replacing our new information Hughesnet seperated the old and new account to two different charges claiming we have service at two different addresses...our old billing info and our new billing info. When trying to explain to Hughesnet that service was always at our address for four years now. Installation, service calls, equiptment all received at our home address ALL WE DID WAS CHANGE BILLING INFO! Our old eqiptment will not work and has not worked since May but they continue to double charge my account for our old service and our new service.

I called and spoke to and english challenged speaker and was first told they could only reimburse my account for two monthes of over billing, when I became angry and demanding to speak to a manager I was put on hold several times and told there was nothing they can do for me and they will not be able to reimburse for any months because they claim I had service at two different sites. All we did was update our billing info.

Kim-Berly of El Paso, TX October 22, 2009

We ordered a combo pack through Dish which third partied out internet to Hughesnet which we were not aware until a mass set of technicians arrived on the day of installation. There weer multiple problems that resulted in us having a conference call via cells inour garage with all the installers, Dish and Blue Kiwi/HughesNet. The end result was we would be charged absolutely no installation or other fees, everything would be done and we had discounted services to everything the first 6 months.

We let the Hughesnet people get to work in our office connecting to my husband's laptop until we were ready for the main pc and we both then went to work with the 5 installers for dish on the satellite & all the rooms in our home. The hughesnet guy finished and said basically that was it. The next morning we had a 20 charge to my husband's debit card from the technician as well as nearly 200 from Hughesnet.

My husband had left his wallet & work items in our office when he got home that day, we had no idea that a technician would get into his wallet and take him information. That is clearly our fault, however, this technician took our information and submitted it for payment...as well as he accessed 3 porn video sites on my husband's laptop and they were still running when we got to the pc! We immediately reported it all to Hughesnet who refused to help us. They claimed we signed a contract with them and they gave them that information and they could care less what the technician did and as for their charges, they claimed that they may have agreed to no installation fees but they did not agree to no ACTIVATION FEES and therefore they could charge us.

I advised them there was a recorded conference call, contacted DISH and their department made another 3 way call with me and Hughesnet to verify and have they charges removed. Hughesnet was just as rude to DISH and told them fax them some papers and they would CONSIDER the request. After 6 weeks of struggling to get our needed monies returned and dealing with a service that barely worked as well as phones representatives for Hughes that had the niceties of a caveman and the language of a hardened truckdriver, I cancelled the service and phoned my bank to put a block against them...only to have nearly 400 taken out the within minutes of my calling. Hughes claims there is a 2 year contract that if we cancel they get that money. I demanded a copy of that document which they have yet to produce.

Although my husband actually dealt with the technician & installers, they claim it is MY signature on the document. In August there was nearly another 400 removed and I was terrible upset at how they got past the block. This time they claimed it was because I had not returned the equipment which I advised they had yet to send us the information to do so and we were on vacation and would not be home for 2 weeks to do so if they would supply. They refused and said two weeks more was past the allowable time.

I called my bank & visa and reported and disputed only to find they had pushed all these charges through as "preauthorized debit charges" as if we signed each time. Visa themselves called on a 3 way to demand an address to return the equipment and still a battle ensued. In the long, Hughesnet refuses to supply any documentation to prove their claim that I or my hsuband signed any contract with them and merely claim we owe. My bank & VISA after months of investigating have deemed we didn't authorize anything to them other than the 6 weeks of service (81+ I agreed to pay) and that the remaining 900+ they have been taking was returned.

Hughesnet filed it against my husband's credit and we now have agencies cvalling nonstop and my husband's high range excelleent rating has tanked. His is busy preparing for another deployment so this falls heavily on my shoulders and it si frustrating that no matter how much documentation I have or present this company refuses to listen, offer assidtance, offer supervisors, mailing addresses, etc...and despite the fact that I am the one who cancelled service nearly 6 months ago and have the computer site print out to prove it, the report to my husband's credit claims they just recently closed our account due to NON PAYMENT.

How can an agency get away with this? Everyone run from them like crazy! We went several months without needed funds as we are a middle class military family and heavily dependent upon our pay. It has now tanked my husband's credit rating and is causing much hardship trying to fix it to be told there is nothing we can do despite our bank & VISA ending an investigation over it in our favor!

George of Torrey, UT October 20, 2009

We signed up with hughesnet's business connection plan (179.00 per month). It took the first 6 months to finally get it dialed in with a decent connection. We suspended the service for winter and reinstated it the following spring. Since then the speeds have been incredibly slow between 500 t0 700 kbs as the top download speeds (speeds that we could of got from the 79.00 per month plan). Technical support is a joke and we've gone the whole additional 6 months without any resolve concerning the speeds and nothing but run arounds from the support team. We've decided to file a complaint with the FCC regarding our experience and to discontinue our services. If your planning on signing up with these folks, I would highly recommend that you reconsider.

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